Optoelectronic components, for example an organic light-emitting diode (OLED), may include a multiplicity of electrical and electronic parts, for example an organically functional layer structure with emitter layers, charge carrier transport layers, electrodes, contact pads and the like.
An electrical power supply of an OLED may be formed by an electrical connection of the contact pad of an OLED to terminals of an electrical power supply.
In order to protect against harmful substances, the optoelectronic components are often encapsulated with a thin film, the contact pads also being encapsulated with a thin film.
The encapsulation is conventionally carried out without a mask. In other words: the entire surface of the optoelectronic component is encapsulated.
The encapsulation may often include a plurality of encapsulating layers, for example SiN, ZrO2, Al2O3 or the like.
The formation of the thin-film encapsulation on an optoelectronic component is often carried out by chemical vapor deposition.
In one conventional method, the contact pads for the electrical connection are exposed by removing the thin-film encapsulation from the contact pads by mechanical erosion of the thin-film encapsulation or laser ablation of the thin-film encapsulation.
In the case of erosion or laser ablation of the thin-film encapsulation from the contact pads, however, the contact pads may be partially damaged and/or the thin-film encapsulation may be removed only incompletely from the contact pads.
The degree of damage to the contact pads and/or the amount of thin-film encapsulation remaining on the contact pads may depend on the quality of the thin-film encapsulation.
The damaged contact pads or contact pads with thin-film encapsulation remaining may impair the functionality of an OLED, and for example lead to a change in the contact voltage and/or a change in the current/voltage characteristic.
In another conventional method, the thin-film encapsulation may be chemically deposited from the vapor phase onto the optoelectronic component in such a way that it is patterned by a masking process. During the masking process, however, particle contamination of the thin-film encapsulation and/or scratching of the thin-film encapsulation may occur. In this way, the protection of the organic light-emitting diode against harmful substances may be impaired, so that the lifetime of the optoelectronic component may be reduced.
In another conventional method, the thin-film encapsulation may be formed by atomic layer deposition (ALD) of the substance of the thin-film encapsulation on the organic light-emitting diode.
By ALD, for example, thin layers, for example multilayer structures, may in this case be formed. An electrical connection to the contact pads may be formed by contacting through the thin-film encapsulation. Contacting through the thin-film encapsulation may, however, lead to impairment of the electrical properties and/or optoelectronic properties of the optoelectronic component.